Ever hear the saying, “Time is money”? It’s true, but people don’t often realize the extent to which it’s true. Of course, time is precious and irrecuperable and all that, but let’s focus on the financials. (This is a business blog, after all). The value of time is not fully measured by hourly rates or annual salaries. Time as money is far more valuable than most people think.

Take what you’re doing right now, for instance. You have the time to read this blog and learn more strategies for vastly improving the way you do business. It’s one of the many reasons we routinely advertise the fact that Shopventory saves the average user 6 hours per week.

Here are 3 tips for maximizing your work week:

1. Identify ‘put up a sign’ problems

If you’ve ever been on a back-country road in the United States, you are likely aware that those roads sometimes are sometimes used by deer as well as other cars. There are two ways to handle this. Put up a fence or put up a sign.

A fence requires hundreds of man-hours to put up, as well as ongoing future maintenance. A sign can be installed in an hour by one man and only needs replacing every few decades. Sometimes, the fence is worth the effort. You wouldn’t want the municipality being sued weekly for allowing deer to roam onto a high-traffic thoroughfare. But for winding forest roads, putting up a sign and relying on drivers to respond accordingly is generally the best option.

In other words, ask whether a course of action is worth the time and effort it takes to implement. Some managers will burden their employees with “simple” tasks that are often purely for the manager’s comfort. The employee then spends a sizable chunk of time (or multiple small chunks of time) implementing the measure— time that is usually better spent elsewhere.

Implementation:

Create checklists for common tasks

Eliminate unnecessary work

Stay quiet about your “preferences” unless absolutely necessary

And yes, sometimes put up an actual sign!

2. Quantify time as an expense

You wouldn’t buy a brand new computer for your business without knowing how much it will cost and whether it is worth the return on investment. The question is, do you extend that to the time it takes to install and set it up in the first place?

Your employees’ time isn’t quite as tangible as office hardware, but it’s extremely valuable. If it isn’t being spent or invested in growing your business, you’re wasting your capital. It’s not enough to just remove redundant “busy-work”, you must also take advantage of that newly liberated time to train them to do the tasks their managers end up having to do.

Trained employees are confident, competent, and loyal. Even sub-par employees can be polished into productive gems if you’re willing to invest time and resources to build them up and empower them.

Remember, time is money. That means time must also be well-spent and well-invested in order to yield maximum returns.

Implementation:

Put a dollar value on time and factor in the estimated time costs when planning

Invest in training your employees

3. Anything that can be automated should be automated

This one has been true since the Industrial Revolution. Automation and outsourcing free up manpower. It’s what they do. This doesn’t mean firing people and replacing them with robots, but perhaps you invest in an external cleaning crew so your assistant manager can join you on trips to the market where you can teach them how to shop for produce instead of having to oversee your employees cleanup of the restaurant every morning.

One of the biggest time sinks for small businesses is in reconciling inventory data. People sometimes spend hours staring at spreadsheets trying to reconcile sales, pull up receipts, track discounts, find historical data on their inventory, find out what’s running low, or locate critical vendor and purchase order info. All of that can be served up in seconds with the right software.

We should know. We built software that does just that. It’s why we advertise the fact that Shopventory saves the average business 6 hours per week. Any savvy business owner knows what 6 hours per week means, not only in terms of payroll, but also in terms of having more time to strategize, haggle with vendors, chase down leads, and actually build the business instead of just manage it.

That’s over 1 hour per workday saved for most businesses, and our starting plan costs 79¢ a day. That’s less than a can of soda these days.

Implementation:

Invest in automation

Use tools and software that save time and free up manpower

Redirect “free time” toward training

Right now, we are offering a 30-day full-featured free trial of Shopventory with no credit card required. We also back Shopventory with a 30-day money back guarantee. That means a total of 60 days risk-free!

You can start a trial today and join the thousands of merchants all over the world who use Shopventory to optimize their time as well as their inventory!